It’s a big job, overseeing more than 200 lawyers and tens of thousands of prosecutions every year, and it's a job our guest today would very much like to have.

Thiru Vignarajah is a former prosecutor who’s spent most of his legal career in public service. He was born in Baltimore to Sri Lankan immigrant parents, both of them Baltimore City public school teachers. Vignarajah himself is a product of the public school system, having gone from Edmondson Heights and Woodlawn High to Yale University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review . He went on to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, and he served as a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Baltimore, working under then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein. Vignarajah subsequently moved to the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office, where he headed the Major Investigations Unit.

In 2014, he was appointed Deputy Attorney-General for Maryland, under Attorney-General Brian Frosh, a position he left in 2016 to work on the transition team for the ill-fated Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

He is currently a litigation partner at the law firm DLA Piper in Baltimore, but he continues to act as the lead attorney for the State of Maryland in the post-conviction appeal of Adnan Syed, who was convicted of the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee in a case that became the subject of the popular podcast Serial.

Thiru Vignarajah is 41 years old. He lives in Federal Hill.

We streamed this conversation live on the WYPR Facebook page; you can view the video here.

Marilyn Mosby drew international attention when she indicted six Baltimore police officers in the police-custody death of Freddie Gray in 2015. None of those indictments resulted in a conviction, but Ms. Mosby points to a 95% conviction rate to date for her office overall. The State’s Attorney’s office prosecuted more than 41,000 cases last year.

Here in Baltimore, the city’s top prosecutor is the Baltimore City State’s Attorney, an elective position that's often in the eye of the storm surrounding some very high profile criminal cases. The incumbent State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, attracted national attention with her decision to indict six officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray in 2015. Mr. Gray died while in police custody. None of the indicted officers were convicted of a crime.

But while cases like those involving Freddie Gray get a lot of scrutiny, the State’s Attorney’s office prosecuted more than 41,000 cases in 2017. The State’s Attorney oversees more than 400 people, including more than 200 lawyers, and the salary is the highest of any city employee. It’s a big job, and there are two people challenging the incumbent for it in next month’s Democratic primary.

Tom's guest for the hour today is one of those challengers.

Ivan J. Bates is a veteran litigator, defense attorney and city prosecutor. He earned his BA in journalism at Howard University in 1992 and got his Law Degree at William and Mary in 1995. He was admitted to the Maryland bar that year and after clerking for Judge David B. Mitchell on the Circuit Court of Baltimore City, he served as an assistant state’s attorney in Baltimore, where he worked in the Juvenile Crime Division and later, the Homicide Division. He started his own law practice in 2006.